Humanists International Answer Your Questions

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To mark the end of Season One, Gary and Leon are joined by Harry, Fundraising and Communications Officer at Humanists International, who hosts a special listener Q&A. Questions came in from around the world covering everything from digital safety under repressive regimes, to the future of the UN, to humanism's role in the age of AI and climate change.

In this episode we cover

• How humanists living under restrictive regimes can stay safe and connected — and what Humanists International can offer
• The Freedom of Thought Report — greatest improvements and worst declines over the past decade
• Humanism, climate change and AI — can humanists help shape the story humanity tells about itself?
• Concerns about the direction of UN reform and what it means for human rights funding and civil society
• How Humanists International sets its priorities, how it is governed, and how it is financed

Further reading and references

• Humanists International casework and security resources: https://humanists.international/what-we-do/
• Frontline Defenders — security support for human rights defenders: https://www.frontlinedefenders.org
• Luxembourg Declaration on Artificial Intelligence — Humanists International: https://humanists.international/policy/luxembourg-declaration-on-artificial-intelligence-and-human-values/
• UN80 Initiative — reform framework: https://www.un.org/en/un80

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This podcast is produced by Humanise Live.

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🎶Music: Horizon by Simon Folwar

Podcast transcripts are AI-generated and may contain errors or omissions. They are provided to make our content more accessible, but should not be considered a fully accurate record of the conversation.

Transcript

Meet Harry & Introducing Q&A Episode

Harry Linley 0:04

Welcome to Freedom of Thought, a podcast by Humanist International. My name is Harry Lindley. I'm the fundraising and communications officer at Humanist International. I'll be your guest host for this week's episode, which marks the end of the first season of the podcast. We've received many questions from our listeners, and we want to take this opportunity to share some of them with Gary and Leon. Please continue to share your questions with us for when the podcast returns. Gary and Leon, thank you for joining us for this special QA episode.

Staying Safe Under Religious Regimes

Harry Linley 0:32

So our first question comes from Fahim, who wrote to us from Afghanistan, where he says openly expressing humanist ideas has become increasingly dangerous since the fall of the previous government. He asked, How can humanists living under highly restrictive religious regimes safely stay connected and raise their voices without putting their lives at risk? Additionally, what concrete support can humanist international offer to people like him who quietly hold humanist beliefs but live under severe restrictions and constant rest?

Leon Langdon 1:01

I think I'll I'll start on this first one and then and then pass over to Gary. I think the first thing is is one thing we've really seen over the last sort of 10 or 15 years is the growth in online communities and online spaces. And they are they are vital lifelines for for people like Fahim. Now it's difficult to find them, and and I think it probably should be difficult to find them because of of threats from authorities in places like Afghanistan. But finding community in those spaces is is probably the the best thing that we can sort of say. Obviously, within that, prioritizing digital hygiene for one's own safety is incredibly important. So using VPNs, encrypted messaging, pseudonyms, of course, are also a part of the reality for living under a repressive regime like that. And I think safety unfortunately has to come before visibility in in places like that. And so I think that's to some extent an answer on how to stay connected. I do also think, and I've heard anecdotally that there is scope for talking to friends about this when you've know people a long time and can sort of know their true beliefs. But obviously that always comes with a huge warning and none of this is safe ultimately. I think when it comes to raising voices, that to some extent is the responsibility on those of us not in somewhere like Afghanistan. I think organizations like Humanist International putting the case of the Taliban, for example, before the UN and other NGOs and other civil society actors doing that. I think that is where our responsibility comes in to people like Fahim, for whom it's just not safe to do that. Gary, do you have any any thoughts?

Gary McLelland 2:30

I totally agree. I think our approach is always safety first. You know, the safety of the individual is paramount. We have some resources on our website, casework resources and security resources. We've been very lucky in the past that we've had bits of funding available to do training in South Asia and other places around the world, looking at safety, security, psychosocial safety. But the truth is that it can be incredibly risky. And if you're in a very risky country, keeping yourself safe is the primary concern. We would like to do more work on safety and security. We'll be doing an introduction session at the World Humanist Congress this year on safety and security, and for people that are able, obviously, to travel to Canada. There are other organizations out there like Frontline Defenders and many others who specialize in security for human rights defenders, including humanists and others, and they look at things like you've mentioned VPNs and encrypted platforms and things. One of the things that is available to connect with humanists international is in a country where it's illegal or impossible to establish a humanist organization, we have a sort of mechanism that allows people to connect with us individually. Again, we do have encrypted platforms that people can communicate with us, but being connected with an organization like ours in itself obviously carries risks, and people have to be very, very careful about making sure their devices are safe and their communications are encrypted and so on. So I think primarily what we would say to people is put your safety first and we will do whatever we think we can that's safe to connect you with people around the world. It really has to be a kind of risk assessment basis, if you like. And that obviously, as you say, Leon, is underpins wider advocacy work that we do. So, you know, through the freedom of thought report that we publish every year, we try to make exactly these cases come to life and draw attention to the situation that many people in the world would face grave danger just for simply having the conversation that we're having right now. So yeah, safety first. And I guess if it's safe to do so, connecting with networks and so on, and for us to be able to publish information and do some high-level advocacy work on behalf of people is really what we we can encourage people to do.

Leon Langdon 4:43

I'll just say two more things on that. I think the first is just to a sort of meta note is is even just the fact that this podcast is reaching people in Afghanistan and we got questions from all over the world in many repressive countries. I hope that that shows those people that that there is access to to these sorts of things now again, with all the caveats of of the safety necessary to be involved in and to be even just listening to something like this. And the other thing is just to take a step back and just to tell people about our past history of casework, which is is extensive, and and we used to have the ability or do our best to support non-religious people where they face persecution around the world uh with direct support. Now, for several years, I think for about four or five years, we did that, and we simply had too many people coming to us for us to morally and ethically allow ourselves to put out into the world this idea that we could help. Because the fact is that we're a small organization with limited resources, and we were getting hundreds upon hundreds of requests for help every single year. And we had to make the the really unfortunate decision to change strategically in how we were dealing with that. And I know Gary's made this plea a couple of times, but if there are any, you know, humanist billionaires out there who'd like to support us in doing that work, we have a history of doing so. We just didn't necessarily have the means. But on a very genuine note, there are hundreds, if not hundreds of thousands, of people. There was just thousands who reached out to us over a couple of years looking for this help. And it's a great privilege that we were able to help many of them, but there are many, many more who we weren't able to in that time, which is is a sad reality as well.

Harry Linley 6:14

Gary mentioned

Freedom Of Thought Report Highs & Lows

Harry Linley 6:15

the Freedom of Thought report. For listeners who don't know, this is the report we publish annually, which documents discrimination against non-religious people around the world. Scott Douglas Jacobson on Facebook asked, What state has shown the greatest improvement in conditions for freedom of thought since the start of the report? And conversely, what state do you think has shown the worst degradation of freedom of thought?

Gary McLelland 6:35

Excellent question. It's nice to have a positive-based question for the Freedom of Thought Report because um I feel like every year, uh especially in recent years, it's a very depressing read about the state of the world. The truth is the Freedom of Thought Report is published as a sort of snapshot of what's happening in every country in each particular year. So we don't do tracking in that way. But zooming out and looking at the report over the past 10 years, I think we can say that there has been progress. I'm thinking about countries like Iceland and Norway who have continued to show like a real advancement in their laws and policies as it relates to non-religious people, countries in Europe which have abolished blasphemy laws. There was a big push around five years ago for countries which have so-called dead letter blasphemy laws to abolish them. Not because of a real concern that the laws might be used in those countries, but as really a signal to the rest of the world, and also acknowledging that many countries at the United Nations who have dangerous blasphemy laws were using the existence of blasphemy laws in European countries as a defense to say, well, you're just picking on us, but these countries have blasphemy laws too. I think that push has has really been a very helpful thing to try and underscore internationally the argument that blasphemy laws, there is no such thing as a bad blasphemy laws. They are de facto bad law. And so that's been a real progress, I think. And even just the visibility of the report, the fact that, you know, when we launched the report now, it's cited by UN officials, by parliamentarians around the world, by specialists. I mean, Leon and I were in Brussels just about a month ago, two months ago, at the launch, and it was attended by UN officials, members of the European Parliament. So it's having a real impact and it's being read by the right people. So I think that's a very encouraging sign. In terms of the worst violations, I mean, that we just heard from our friend in Afghanistan. I think it obviously what's happened with the the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, it's just a tragedy. It's a tragedy to watch the re-establishment of all of these very, very draconian laws and policies. I also, I guess, think of the situation in India with the continued degradation of a pluralist secularist democracy into a form of Hindu nationalism. So those are probably some of the best and worst cases I can think of, really. What about you, Leon?

Leon Langdon 8:53

Just to pick up on dead letter laws, I I think some people, hopefully we've listeners still hear from episode one of the podcast, and we haven't lost them in in the last couple of episodes. But Mubarak Bala was talking about being in prison and having had his prison guards, you know, as he was sort of complaining, say, well, the British have blasphemy laws now, that at the time was just Northern Ireland and until recently Scotland. But you know, they were still there on the books and still sort of fodder for that exact example that you bring up. I think in terms of improvements, I I agree with everywhere you said. I know in the last 10 or 15 years or so, Ireland and Scotland, you know, our two home countries, also Greece, I think, have have gotten rid of blasphemy laws. On the flip side in Europe, Denmark have brought in a de facto blasphemy law, and Sweden have considered it pretty heavily. So it goes both ways, I guess. Completely agree with Afghanistan. I think there's also a note to say, which is as situations improve in some places, we might actually see statistics that that might make things seem worse. So what I mean by that is as you educate people about their rights to be non-religious, to be humanist, as you tell them about international law, as organizations like ours gain visibility, as secularism gains popularity in parts of the world, one of the potential things is that people are then more inclined to firstly speak up and secondly to report violations where they otherwise might not either have faced violations and suffered sort of silently, or they might not have been aware of that they could report things. And so you do kind of get this strange short-term negative effect potentially in some places. Nigeria comes to mind there that I think we have seen improvements, but then also we have seen obviously some really terrible repression of people like Mubarak and others there. And so that's an example that comes to mind. But completely agree that the visibility of the report and and the work on the report is is definitely a benefit overall, and something that even just this week um I joined online an event hosted by the Swiss government, by our colleagues at Article 19, and in the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and was able to present some of the findings on blasphemy law specifically to a closed session there, which was really valuable.

Gary McLelland 10:57

It's really interesting, and I think it's worth highlighting again that point, often called the information paradox. So many human rights organizations around the world will report this phenomenon, which is it's much easier to report on human rights violations in countries where they are probably less severe. And that's because in countries where there's severe human rights violations, there's often also press restrictions, reporting restrictions. And there's also often less of a commitment to the rule of law. So one of the areas that we've highlighted in the Freedom of Thought report that we'd like to improve is at the moment we analyze the law and policy as it relates to non-religious people and minorities and so on. But we're making an assumption here that the law and policy is followed. So, for example, we've talked in the past about how the constitution of Nigeria guarantees the right to freedom of religion or belief. Well, we know from Mubarak in practice that that right is not applied fairly and equally. And we know that's the case in countries around the world. We have two members of staff dedicated to the Freedom of Thought Report. It's a massive report. Again, I guess to make a call out to all of our wealthy listeners that we would really like to be able to expand the team that work on this report because there is so much more we could do to analyze the rule of law as it relates to these laws and policies around the world and to give a bit more social qualitative information to go alongside the legal analysis that we do. So, yes, it it's a paradox that yes, sometimes the the countries about which we have least information are likely to be some of the most grave violators of human rights.

Harry Linley 12:26

Podcast

Humanism Facing Climate And AI

Harry Linley 12:27

listener Matt Galloway asked, Humanity now shares a genuinely global predicament with climate change and the growth of AI. These feel like the raw material for a new mythology, a story we might tell together about what we are and what we are here for. Can humanism position itself to help that story emerge?

Leon Langdon 12:44

Feels like one of those big picture questions that Gary is probably better placed to answer than me, or if Andrew Copson was here. But I I guess I'll briefly say is I very much see humanism as as I see most belief systems as as having some sort of story to tell on what's happening now. And I think regardless of what they are, I think having values at the moment is an incredibly important touchstone. The world is moving so outrageously quickly and ultimately in a direction that the many of us, humanists particularly, are really worried about. And so I think having values as a touchstone, having concern for others and having humanity and concern for the world at large as a touchstone amidst all of that as this reference point that we can consistently go back to, which is something, you know, probably come up in in some of the later questions as well. But having uh a values base on which to live one's life is is incredibly important. And I think community within that is incredibly important. I know there are people in our community doing great work on things like climate change um in their jobs, and they're doing it from a humanist perspective. You've people like Greg Epstein in in Harvard doing work on AI and the ethics of AI. Again, people within our community, and I think there are many, many people who are doing this work, and I think that's testament to having humanism as a values base.

Gary McLelland 14:00

Yeah, I think you're totally right. But I was reflecting generally on this uh with someone recently, in fact, it might have been you, Leon, the other day. We were talking about technology. It probably is a reflection from me as a millennial that, you know, I I entered my adolescence before the internet was really a thing to go from that to now the the kind of digital tools and AI and things that we have, not to sound too old. It is amazing that the tools and the opportunities that we have available at our fingertips now are are truly phenomenal in something which is kind of staggering, something which was unimaginable to me as a young person. And to just be a bit maybe flippant for a second, you know, I I feel like well, we've talked about sci-fi in the past, and a bit of a sci-fi fan myself, I feel like we do stand at the crossroads of choosing between whether we want a world which becomes a Star Wars or a Star Trek. But I think how we choose to navigate these changing times is, as humanists fully understand, down to the people making these decisions. There is no guiding force, there's no kind of secret hand that's going to manipulate the history for us. It will be down to us. And, you know, I've said many times before that I think the one area in which humanists really have to establish a voice and to speak up and offer the values that we have, which are very relevant to these times, is in the tech sphere. There is an insidious and cynical philosophy, I believe, driving a lot of these developments in tech, long-termism and transhumanism and all these other philosophies. And actually, as we've discussed last year at the General Assembly through the Luxembourg Declaration, we need humanist values at the heart of these tech developments in order to try and make sure that we can navigate these choppy waters. Also, I suppose it's coming back to a, you know, we're living through a time of the fracturing of the international cooperation, international diplomacy efforts, probably still in the wake of the 2008 financial crash and all of the uncertainty that that's thrown up. But it's more crucial than ever that we try to navigate back to being an open, internationalist, rules-based system. And again, as Andrew said on the podcast, humanist values are ideal to navigate us through these waters. They're not the only ones, but they give an ideal framework for people who want to come together and face these challenges together.

Leon Langdon 16:16

I think just on engagement with tech and and policymakers, that that does really cement this question in the what can we do to help this story emerge from a humanist point of view. And that meeting I just mentioned, and which took place in Gion this week just gone, Meta were there, and who obviously run what is a Facebook, Instagram, threads, if anyone's still using that. And both meta staff and the representatives of the Meta Oversight Board, which support their content moderation and things like that, and help Meta ideally or the meta platforms be a as safe a place as possible for people while ex while respecting freedom of expression. They were all there. And so that's part of this concrete dialogue of helping this story emerge in the direction that is in line with humanist values, in line with international human rights law, and in line with the world that we want to see.

Harry Linley 17:03

I would definitely agree with Gary. I do think there are some similarities between the Star Trek philosophy and humanist

UN Reform And Human Rights Risks

Harry Linley 17:09

values. Next, we have a question from Ante Yolin, who says he is looking forward to joining us for the 2026 World Humanist Congress in Ottawa. He notes that the world is changing, and so is the UN. Reflecting on the shifts that Leon has described in previous episodes, particularly around processes, he asks whether we are concerned about the direction of the UN is taking and how these changes are shaping our approach to engaging at international institutions.

Gary McLelland 17:34

Well, this is obviously Leon's area of speciality, so but before he answers this question, let me just give some general reflections from me. The UN is what its member states encourage and allow it to be. And it feels very relevant for us because Humanist International is also what its memb what its members allow it and want it to be. It's uh an international democratic organization. So, you know, one of the things I say when I speak to humanist groups around the world is, you know, are you members of the UN association in your country? Um, you know, have you spoken to your parliamentarians about their engagement with the UN and other international bodies? Because the UN is only as much or as little as we encourage and allow it to be. We've talked before about reports we have seen in the news about the defunding of the UN and the threats to remove some of its powers and treaties and so on. So it really we have to look inwards at our own national situation, political situation, to be sure that that we are allowing our politicians and our state leaders to let the UN do its job. But I'll hand over to Leon for the specifics.

Leon Langdon 18:37

First, I'll say I'm also excited to see everyone at the Humanist Congress in Ottawa. It's usually Gary who gets the lines in on how great Ottawa will be. But I I will say I'll say a couple of things. I think the first is anyone who thinks that the UN has always been a good thing is kidding themselves. My master's thesis was about terrible things the UN has done or been responsible for even by accident. There is also a huge discrepancy in the UN. I know Gary says it's democratic, but I would scoff a little bit at that when it comes to say the UN Security Council and looking at at how that's set up and additionally, obviously the way that that things play out, who funds it, you know, it's it's not necessarily always been a great place. I think a lot of great things have come out of it, a lot of good has come out of it, but I think that there always have been serious problems. I think they are being really shown up for what they are, although from a slightly different perspective than maybe many of us who have been critical of the UN and international funding and and for things like donor requirements being too onerous and taking too much money for states and and international NGOs in in the West rather than giving them to communities who actually need the funds. So the criticisms that have been leveled at the UN, for example, by the US recently are not necessarily the ones that we would have been forwarding for for a while, but but I do think it gets to the fact that the UN is a is a flawed body. And I think it will always be a flawed body because when you bring 193 states plus observers plus civil society plus whoever else together, it's never going to satisfy everyone. And so it will always be a level of compromise. And I do think this is a moment that the UN and the multilateral system generally has its back against the wall. I think within that, we are definitely concerned about this direction. We're concerned about what might happen. The the UN 80 initiative, which is this framework of of how the UN is going to change, really deprioritizes human rights funding. I think human rights funding is facing something like 15 to 18% of the cuts in staff, despite only being responsible for three to four percent of the UN budget, which is is obviously disproportionate. And I think the UN should serve not just the states, it is a state body, but it should also serve people. And human rights are one of the main vehicles by which it does that. And so we're definitely concerned. We're very involved in a lot of negotiations. We've just submitted some questions to the new candidates for UN Secretary General. Hopefully they'll be well received. We're engaging in dialogue with other civil society about how to push back against some of this stuff. I think where a lot of that manifests is what I would say is around the edges, the stuff that is maybe less interesting. It's like, oh, losing speaking time for human rights council debates or difficulties getting into the building because of security, you know, making civil society cue versus staff and states being able to go through. They're really small edge things, but they are things that we need to monitor and keep an eye on because they can speak to the bigger picture. So we're taking things in their fullest. We are very aware of the UN and its flaws. We are also conscious of the fact that reform is not necessarily happening from an ideal place. It's happening because of this sort of funding crisis, but we are engaging as best we can with the actors involved. And one thing, for example, on that is I think I mentioned a couple of episodes, the High Commissioner for Human Rights launched the or is launching the Global Alliance for Human Rights, which was announced at the last Human Rights Council session. We've been asked to be involved in that early on, and that could be, you know, something really hopeful. And exciting, bringing together civil society, faith leaders, states that care about human rights, government, local government, cities, no, a huge, proper, multi-stakeholder approach to this current moment could be really ideal. But again, we are being very aware of both the flaws and also the flaws that could be exacerbated through poorly done reform.

How HI Set Priorities And Funding

Harry Linley 22:20

Our next question is from Joanna Williams. She asked, given your small team, you obviously can't tackle absolutely every issue of concern to the humanist community. How do you set priorities for your work? And can you tell listeners a bit more about Humanists International's system of governance and how it's financed?

Gary McLelland 22:37

Yes. Thank you for the question, Joanna. Um yes, I mean we we certainly can't attempt to do all of the work that we would like to do. But the way that we are governed, so the General Assembly every year is made up of representatives of our 120 plus member organizations. So the members of Humanists International are organizations, not individuals. So we are a federation. Every year we have a General Assembly where representatives from those 120 organizations come together and they discuss the issues of the day, they vote for board members. And so all of our board members are elected by the members of Humanists International. We have 10 board members from different places all around the world, and they meet six times per year to review reports from the staff, to offer feedback, criticism, support to the work of the staff, and to guide it on behalf of the General Assembly. The priorities are set by the board, but by the direction of the General Assembly. So every year at the General Assembly, we have a series of motions and resolutions. So last year there was a resolution on artificial intelligence, and that directly feeds into the work of the board and the staff. So on Wednesday, Leon and I were having a conversation about two high-level meetings that are coming up at the European Parliament and the European Commission on Artificial Intelligence. So we will, for example, be going directly to policymakers at the European Union with the Luxembourg Declaration on Artificial Intelligence and other member priorities, and we'll be discussing them, debating them, putting forward our point of view. So is it the work and the priorities of Humanist International is set directly by its members, by democratic debate and discussion at the General Assembly. Obviously, as a staff team, we have to prioritize the day-to-day work of the organization. Hopefully, this podcast has given people a bit of an insight into what we do on a kind of day-to-day basis. So you'll know that Leon's flying all around the world attending UN meetings and the different things like that. So we are a small team and you know we are about 10, soon to be 12 people working all around the world. It's a small team. I think we do a massive volume of work for the relatively small resources that we have available. But it's also true to say that we we are bigger than just 12 people. So we work hand in hand with many of our member organizations. Um so I'm thinking of uh colleagues from Norway, US, UK, India. We're day in, day out in touch with staff and volunteers from all of our member organizations working hand in hand. Leon will be preparing briefings and giving support and asking for information, and so will we all. In a way, it's a small team doing a high volume of work, but it's also part of a network of colleagues from all around the world.

Leon Langdon 25:13

On the the General Assembly's role and value, I remember in Singapore two years ago, there was two motions, one on Venezuela and one on Afghanistan. And within about a fortnight, we had delivered UN statements on both of those. Now, that was opportune timing, it was human rights council session. It meant that we could do that. But that's a very clear example of how quickly we can action stuff and how we can create campaigns very quickly based on something like that. Another thing is obviously we have to be reactionary. The world, like I've mentioned already today, is incredibly fast moving. For example, talking about the US withdrawal from international organizations. Um that came out of a conversation that when we saw it happen, Gary and I were like, right, let's look through our past policies. We saw in 1984, I think it was, statement on the withdrawal from UNESCO that the that was made at the time. We consulted with the board, we consulted obviously with our US members to make that happen and then circulated to it to all of our membership. And so that's an example of where we can be a bit more reactionary. Obviously, work on Afghanistan in the past with the fall of the Taliban has had to be reactionary as well, and same with with humanists at risk. I think another shout out goes to our previous director of advocacy, Dr. Elizabeth O'Casey, who did a huge amount of work to position us incredibly strongly at the United Nations, particularly in the realm of the right to freedom of religion or belief. So there's a UN document from the 1990s called General Common 22, which basically states that the right to freedom of religion or belief includes the right not to have a belief, not to have a religion. And that document existed, but it wasn't necessarily part and parcel of the work that that was being done. And she did a huge amount of work to really forward and center that position and our position at the UN. And so I have the privilege of writing on the coattails of her work and many of my meetings look at, on one hand, the fact that the right to freedom of religion or belief includes the right to be humanist and the concerns of our group, but also where, for example, the rise of religious nationalism, Hindufta in India, Christian nationalism in the US and Europe, where that might harm that right overall. So that's another big priority for us. But ultimately, I think so much of this comes from the General Assembly and from the board. We are a member-led organization. And I remember when I joined a couple of years ago, Gary coined the phrase, or maybe it'd been floating around before, but members are at the heart of everything we do. And that goes for, on one hand, shaping the work that we do. But also, like Gary says, I mean, next week alone I have meetings with three or four members and emailing many more. Humanist Trinidad and Tobago have just submitted a UPR submission talking about their concerns, which I've supported them on. Humanist Brazil are working on one right now. We'll have two members speaking at these AI dialogues. Our humanist ideas ambassadors in Lithuania are soon to meet the Secretary General of the Council of Europe. We've got meetings set up with national MPs to brief them on some of our work through our members. It's that constant dialogue with our members that I think really serves as a platform for what we do and drives what we do.

Gary McLelland 28:04

Yeah, I think members are at the heart of everything we do. It's sort of a mantra we have in the staff team. And I guess two other things I would say whenever we have a new leader of a humanist organization that's appointed and I'll have a meeting with them. One of the shorthand things I always tell them to take away is think of humanists international as like your external affairs team. So we are here to offer a perspective on the issues that you're working on nationally from the international context. So, for example, we'll have members that will email us and say, we're doing a campaign on abortion in our country. We'd like to know like what's the situation around the world, what's the movements like, what's the campaigns like, who what's been successful, what's the trends. And we can, from speaking to other members, pull together reports and briefings or just share a sense of how we see things at the international context. So I think that's really a helpful thing that we can really offer to members in that situation.

Leon Langdon 28:56

I'll also just add, because I know Harry asked it as well, is how we're financed, and I don't want to seem like we're shadily uh sidestepping that. I think it's just a bit less interesting than how we get our priorities. Our money comes from individual donations and from our members. So our members all pay us dues, and then the rest of it comes from individual donations. We don't get money from governments in the way that no critique of other NGOs, but there are other NGOs who are more reliant on government funding than we are. So we have a real privilege that we maybe haven't been caught up to the same extent in the funding crisis ourselves. And we have in the past gotten grants from governments to run discrete projects, but it's never affected our core work. And it means that that our insofar as our finance and our governance and our priorities intersect, it means that those things can be kept separate and we've not had to ever change policies or do something or not do something based on government funding or anything like

Season Two Plans and Keep In Touch

Leon Langdon 29:49

that.

Harry Linley 29:49

A general question to end what can you tell enjoys of this series about the future of the Freedom of Thought podcast?

Gary McLelland 29:55

Well, I've really enjoyed it. Let's go back to the beginning. Why did we start this podcast? So it was started because Leon and I have every week a conversation about what's happening and the issues at the UN and all the interesting things that Leon's working on. And I said for quite a few weeks in a row, you know, this is such an interesting conversation. I wish our members could be in on this conversation every week to understand a bit more of the context and some of the perhaps internal reflections and in and conversations that we have, which are not quite fully formed enough to become policy statements or emails, and but just to get a sense of what we're doing, why we're doing it, what we're thinking about it. And also, I guess slightly selfishly to just share the volume of work that's happening internally with our members and associates. And I hope and I think that it's been a good opportunity to do that, and also to showcase some of the amazing guests that we've been able to have on the podcast. So it's been really enjoyable. But it is a lot of work, it's a lot of time as well. So we're going to be taking a break for some weeks to just pause and reflect on the next steps. Be very, very keen to hear from people, any feedback, things they liked, things they didn't like, and so on. I think I'm keen that we keep it going in some format. We'll be taking a break, I think, just to reflect and and take stock and see what the the best way forward is in the format and so on. But I think we'll probably be back in a month or so with a new series. But what's your thoughts, Lee?

Leon Langdon 31:15

Yeah, not a huge amount to add, I think, from you know, even just come all the questions that came in, it seems like. Firstly, that we're reaching not only our members, but like I said, people in in context where we wouldn't usually have the ability to reach people. And also the dialogue that that, you know, for example, news stories on our websites doesn't really have the option to do. So so hearing, for example, questions from people like Fahim, and and we got, you know, we didn't get to answer all the questions. Harry very kindly consolidated a lot of the the question and helped us guide this this episode. So much of what we got to hear from people, I think was incredibly valuable. And so I think I I'm excited to be back for for season two in yeah, a couple of weeks, a month or so, once we've you know had a bit of downtime, like you say, a bit of time to reflect, talk with our producer James, to to make sure that the the board are on board, um, as as you say, and to move forward with it there. And and so yeah, I don't think it'll be too long before we're back um and and hopefully, yeah, pick up some steam for for season two.

Harry Linley 32:09

Yeah, hopefully the listeners won't have to wait too long for more content then. Thank you to you both for your very interesting answers. If you found this episode useful, please share it with others. Subscribe wherever you get your podcast and leave us a rating and a five-star review. It makes a big difference in helping new listeners to find the show. If there's a topic you'd like us to cover in future series or someone you'd like to suggest as a guest, you can contact us via the links in the show notes. To find out more or join Humanist International, visit humanist. Thank you to our producer James and the team at Humanize Live, and to the rest of the team at Humanist International. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Freedom of Thought Podcast.